Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates ReportingConstruction on the multi-million dollar Intermountain Medical Center is ahead of schedule. In fact, one part of the campus will be opening for patient care in another three months.
David Grauer, Administrator, Intermountain Medical Center: "Historically, patients and the public have shared corridors. That's not as respectful as it should be. This new environment will allow us to separate this function and I believe in a million and a half square feet, they only cross twice, which is an incredible design."
The hospital is equipped with fiber optics and wireless hookups for internets in patient rooms. Even call buttons to nurses are wireless. There will be 15 intensive care units. The heart ICU's alone have 50 beds.
Heating pipes, water, electrical conduits for all the buildings run the length of campus, which is no small feat. Want to know how big this place is? In one corridor alone, from one end of the complex to the other - all indoors - we're talking about the length of four football fields.
Should it happen, super steel shafts will absorb the energy from an earthquake. But what makes these shock absorbers unique is they're in the open, easy to get to.
David Grauer: "If there is an earthquake, they will buckle and we will simply unbolt them and replace them without tearing out major parts of the hospital, without interrupting services."
Looking west to east, you have the Women's and Newborn Center, the Education Center, the main trauma one Hospital Tower, the Heart and Lung Center, Outpatient Pavilion, and the Cancer Center.
A 40-thousand square foot Lab, which services private physicians and all IHC hospitals, will be fully operational in another month.
The Cancer Center will open for patient care in February of next year. The rest of the Medical Center will open next October, two months ahead of schedule.
